11 January 2015

Preparing to can up the nuggets

Now that the cold front has dissipated, and we can both move without too much creaking and cricking, I am putting up the three skinless nuggets plus the giblets from all five and a previous nugget I had started to simmer for stock but has been chilling on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator.

Since we raise these chicks ourselves, and slaughter them ourselves, it just makes sense to try to get the maximum use and absolute least amount of waste possible. I have tried to make the most of chickens for at least my adult life, on the notion that what is in the grocery used to be a live animal that died for me to eat. When you raise them up from cute little day-old foof-balls to roasting pan size, it really hits home on a visceral level.

So, the usual method I use/have used for years is: cut off the breast meat, take off the legs and wings, simmer the remaining carcass with the neck and giblets for soup stock. This time, I have taken the meat off the leg quarters and wings to raw-pack in wide mouth pint jars ... and each nugget filled a pint jar just about perfectly, with a smidge over an inch head space left. The skinless chicken breasts are in freezer bags and already in the freezer, for use in tacos, enchiladas, stir-fry, or whatever else may strike our fancy in the future.

It should be interesting to see just how many pints of stock and carcass meat from four bodies, three sets of legs and wings, and six sets of giblets.

Pics later, when everything is in jars and ready to go into the pressure canner(s).